I'm often tempted to let this journal spiral down into a "dear diary, this is what I did today" kind of thing. I usually manage to resist. I don't like to talk about me as a person. My past, my present, my life are all things better kept private. I'm here as an artist. If I am to be judged, let me be judged as a creative mind. Judge me not as a person in the physical world but as a concept of an artist who thinks and creates. In a way this makes me more honest about who I am than if I were to go on at lengths about me and my life. My philosophy defines me more than my daily activities and even more than where I've been.

Today I'm breaking that rule in a big way. I don't know why, I just am. I think it's because I do have some point to make and I don't know a better way to make it.

When I was much younger - Probably about eight years old - I had my first real crush. She was a girl on my primary school class. She was fairly knew at the time. Her name was Alicia. She was a quiet, artistic brunette with glasses. Big round ones, if I remember. I never spoke to her much but she was pretty and one day I was sitting next to her in a theatre for a school function and I was amazed to find she had an eccentric, even a little dark, sense of humour like me. Of course, anyone as artistic as she was, would have to be imaginative. She was the first girl I was really interested in. As much as an eight year old can be interested in a girl. I hadn't actually thought of her for years before tonight. Much of my past is a mystery to me but perhaps it's starting to come back. I'll end that line of thought there.

When I was eleven years old, I moved interstate. I left all my friends and life behind on Easter day and travelled north to a new city in a new state with new people. When I started my new school I earned respect and friends in a way that befits me more than most people realise. I got into a fight. Against three guys. I didn't win. But I won their respect because I was never beaten either. Eventually they got tired of trying to keep me down. All this is kind of beside the point. Sorry, I keep getting tangential.

On the last day of my first school year in this new city, I met a girl. She just so happened to be an artistic brunette. She was charismatic and I connected with her in a way I hadn't even done so with my friends. I fell in love with her. I didn't realise it right away but the next year was high school and as I learnt that we would be in the same high school and even in the same classes, it became obvious that I was in love.

Fortune seemed to favour me at first because we were friends. I thought that was the perfect way to get closer. To rise to the status of a boy friend. I tried. I tried everything I could think of to both impress her and make her love me like I loved her. Looking back on it, I really did love her but it wasn't a positive thing. Is this sounding familiar? Yeah, it was like that. I would have gone to the ends of the world for her. As it happened, I just went to church. I like to think that some good came out of it all for us both but mostly I'm embarassed by it. Mostly I wish things hadn't gone to shit like they did. I took a good friendship for granted and I was the one who abused it and eventually I couldn't stomach it any more. We grew apart. For a couple of years following I was bitter about the experience and I blamed her. I said some pretty cruel stuff. I don't do it any more. I do think our fallout would have happened regardless of my romantic pursuits but that doesn't mean it wasn't part of it. I still see her around, but I don't talk to her. She doesn't talk to me. Sometimes it's tempting but it's probably best to let the past be the past.

This would-be-romance was not a short lived thing. This dragged on for years. When it had finally died its slow, agonising death, I was fifteen. So that would have made it about three years of my life I obsessed over her. It feels like it was longer but, no, it was three. I guess that's a long time for someone so young.

These days I'm in love again. I'm in love with, you guessed it, an artistic brunette who shares my sense of humour in many ways, shares my interests and will one day share the entirety of my life. I guess the lesson I learnt from those three years was to be more up front. In a way I learnt that girls don't like nice guys but the full implications of that didn't become apparent until years later and I've discussed in the last journal entry.

So I've been in love twice, three times if we're feeling generous. But what is love? If I were to learn from the experiences of those around me I'd tell you it was a lie. I'd tell you it was doomed for failure and it that love was not normal, adultury was normal. Pessemistic, huh? These impressions life has had on me lurk in the back of my mind in an inescapable way.

But Zen has taught me that the experiences of others are not the guiding forces in my life. The only person who can answer those kinds of questions for me is me. So what is love?

Love is a connection, so I've told myself. Being in love is like having a best friend and wanting to touch them and not wanting to share them... No. That doesn't seem right. There's too many inconsistancies when that is placed in contrast with the world. So what is it?

I don't think I accept it literally but I'm a big fan of the soul mate idea. The idea that everyone has their perfect match. A person who completes them. The idea that a soul is broken in half at birth and divided between two people is kind of nice but raises a lot of metaphysical ideas that I struggle to rationalise. No, I don't accept that my soul is incomplete with out another person but it certainly seems like part of me is. Hell, part of everyone is incomplete without someone.

So maybe love is biological. A scientifically codifiable force that drives reproduction. How does this stand hand in hand with the theory that homosexuality is the adaption of an over populated species? No, that works. The same biological response to the opposite gender for driving reproduction can be applied to the same gender for population control... No. That's too cold.

But nothing is black and white and so maybe love is both those things and more, all mixed together.

So we return to the Zen idea of finding your own answers. I'm not going to tell you what love is because I think it's an important questions everyone should ask and discover for themself. But ultimately, it should be discovered because love is nice. But it needs to be honest. It should also be pure. The world doesn't need nice guys, it needs honesty. Honesty with ourselves and honesty with others. That's the secret right there, baby.

So I've talked about life and I've talked about love. That just leaves the one that got away. Well... There isn't one. I'm not going to let there be one. The way I see it, the only way something can get away from you is if you have it and nothing I have is getting away from me. Not life and not love. That is my perceveirance in the arena of romance.

Because I'm a big fan of love. It's something everyone should try at least once. It's not something we should give up on either. No matter how much we fuck up and no matter how much it hurts, you shouldn't give up.

There's a message in there. I dare say there's a few. But, honestly, I wanted to talk to you about love because the world needs as much of it as it can get. The only way I knew how to tackle this topic in any detail was to talk a little more about me than I'm generally comfortable with.